In the last period of the Ottoman Empire, Jerusalem as other cities of the Arab provinces experimented many reforms and changes that affected the life and habits of the citizens. These transformations can be understood and read in a political and administrative perspective, or in their geopolitical dimensions. We would like to have another perspective on these changes, and try to combine a urban history scrutinity with an attention to intellectual and cultural aspects of the daily life in the city. What we want to propose here is to look carefully at the languages used in the documents concerning the urban life of Jerusalem. We know that the Levantine city of Jerusalem was polyglotte. The local communities were speaking and writing in arabic, greek, ladino, armenian, ethiopian, syriac, french..., the pilgrims were adding their languages to the streets: russian, english, german... Through the study of archival documentation, newspapers and libraries, we want to address the question of the polyglossia and the transformation of the linguistic practices in Jerusalem. The careful attention to the use of languages in different registers and spheres, to the historical evolutions of these practices, helps us deconstruct and desessentialize the relation between communities and languages. Moreover, the connected history of language practices that we aim at paves the way to a history of the Jerusalem localness. This localness has a sound, it constitutes a common ability to share and contest the urban citizenship, or better, what is called citadinité in french. The Tanzimat period and the 1908 revolution shape this citadinité and affect the way languages are spoken, written, understood. This paper will be presenting the changes in the linguistic map of Jerusalem at the turn of the 20th Century. It will look at the use of languages in the archives of the local communities, in the libraries and printing houses, it will pay attention to schools and language teachings, but also to poster campains and advertisements. The analysis of these archival elements and the mapping of scriptural documentation will question the transformation of the local polyglossia from mutual understandings or inter-comprehension to multiple translations, from passive understanding to active translation.